Putin was not interested in keeping the operation covert, Albats said. “He wanted to make it as public as possible. He wanted his presence to be known,” and to “show that, no matter what, we can enter your house and do what we want.”

...

For many national-security officials, the e-mail hacks were part of a larger, and deeply troubling, picture: Putin’s desire to damage American confidence and to undermine the Western alliances—diplomatic, financial, and military—that have shaped the postwar world.

... Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of general staff, published an article with the anodyne title “The Value of Science in Prediction.” The article identified and urged the adoption of a Western strategy that involved military, technological, media, political, and intelligence tactics that would destabilize an enemy at minimal cost. The strategy, which came to be known as “hybrid war,” was an amalgam that states have used for generations, but the text took on the status of a legend, and is now known in international military circles as the Gerasimov doctrine.

Gerasimov is sixty-one years old, and is always photographed in a stiff, forest-green military uniform and with a perpetually sagging frown. He trained as a tank commander, and then climbed the military hierarchy; he led the Fifty-eighth Army during the Second Chechen War. In the article for Military-Industrial Courier, Gerasimov suggested that, in the future, wars will be fought with a four-to-one ratio of nonmilitary to military measures. The former, he wrote, should include efforts to shape the political and social landscape of the adversary through subversion, espionage, propaganda, and cyberattacks. His essay, written in the shadow of the Arab Spring, cited the anarchy and violence that erupted in Libya and Syria as proof that, when faced with the combination of pressure and interference, a “perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months, and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.”

... Even with the rise of new technologies, the underlying truth about such operations hasn’t changed. They are less a way to conjure up something out of nothing than to stir a pot that is already bubbling. In the U.S., a strategy like the alleged hacking of the Democrats was merely an effort to deepen an existing state of disarray and distrust. “For something to happen, many factors have to come together at once,” said Alexander Sharavin, the head of a military research institute and a member of the Academy of Military Sciences, in Moscow, where Gerasimov often speaks. “If you go to Great Britain, for example, and tell them the Queen is bad, nothing will happen, there will be no revolution, because the necessary conditions are absent—there is no existing background for this operation.” But, Sharavin said, “in America those preconditions existed.”... The interim chair of the D.N.C., Donna Brazile, had worked on seven Presidential campaigns, but she was unprepared for the level of anger, including death threats, directed toward D.N.C. staff and donors. “I’m from the South, and I’ve been through the traditional kind of campaigns where everybody got to call you the N-word, the B-word, or the C-word,” she said. “But this was not the usual kind of antipathy that you find in American politics. It was something else.” Someone created a fake e-mail account in her name and sent messages to a reporter at the Times. “It was psychological warfare at its best,” she said. (CNN, where Brazile had been a commentator, cut ties with her when hacked e-mails revealed that, after attending network strategy sessions, she shared potential debate questions with the Clinton campaign.) While officials in the Obama Administration struggled with how to respond to the cyberattacks, it began to dawn on them that a torrent of “fake news” reports about Hillary Clinton was being generated in Russia and through social media—a phenomenon that was potentially far more damaging. “The Russians got much smarter since the days of rent-a-crowds and bogus leaflets,” one Obama Administration official said. “During the summer, when it really mattered, when the Russian social-media strategy was happening, we did not have the whole picture. In October, when we had it, it was too late.”... A post-election study by two economists, Matthew Gentzkow, of Stanford, and Hunt Allcott, of New York University, found that, in the final three months of the campaign, fabricated pro-Trump stories were shared four times as often as fabricated pro-Clinton stories. The researchers also found that roughly half the readers of a fake-news story believed it. A study led by Philip N. Howard, a specialist in Internet studies at Oxford University, found that, during the second debate of the general election, automated Twitter accounts, known as “bots,” generated four tweets in favor of Trump for every one in favor of Clinton, driving Trump’s messages to the top of trending topics, which mold media priorities. Internet researchers and political operatives believe that a substantial number of these bots were aligned with individuals and organizations supported, and sometimes funded, by the Kremlin.... The Clinton campaign was making plenty of tactical errors, without foreign assistance, and Trump was reaching white working-class voters far more effectively than the media recognized. ... On Friday, October 28th, the F.B.I. director, James Comey, announced that new e-mails from Clinton had surfaced, in an unrelated case. Podesta said, “It’s not until that Friday, eleven days out, that you see a major movement of public opinion. The group in the electorate that was moving around the most was non-college-educated women. I think particularly the pushing of the fake news in the last couple of weeks was important in the places that mattered. When you lose by a total of seventy thousand votes in three states, it’s hard to say if any one thing made the difference. Everything makes a difference. I think it definitely had an impact. The interaction between all of this and the F.B.I. created a vortex that produced the result.”... No reasonable analyst believes that Russia’s active measures in the United States and Europe have been the dominant force behind the ascent of Trump and nationalist politicians in Europe. Resentment of the effects of globalization and deindustrialization are far more important factors. But many Western Europeans do fear that the West and its postwar alliances and institutions are endangered, and that Trump, who has expressed doubts about nato and showed allegiance to Brexit and similar anti-European movements, cannot be counted on. Although both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis have expressed support for traditional alliances, Trump remains entirely uncritical of Putin. “Trump changes the situation from a nato perspective,” General Shirreff said. “The great fear is the neutering of nato and the decoupling of America from European security. If that happens, it gives Putin all kinds of opportunities. If Trump steps back the way he seemed to as a candidate, you might not even need to do things like invade the Baltic states. You can just dominate them anyway. You’re beginning to see the collapse of institutions built to insure our security. And if that happens you will see the re-nationalizing of Europe as a whole.”...

“How long will Angela Merkel hold out against Donald Trump?” Stephen Sestanovich, who was an adviser on Russia to both the Reagan and the Clinton Administrations, asked. “She is already by herself in Europe. Putin is going to look like the preëminent power in Europe.” Der Spiegel published a startling editorial recently that reflected the general dismay in Europe, and the decline of American prestige since Trump’s election. The new President, it said, is becoming “a danger to the world” that Germany must stand up in opposition to.

Strobe Talbott, the former Clinton adviser, said, “There is a very real danger not only that we are going to lose a second Cold War—or have a redo and lose—but that the loss will be largely because of a perverse pal-ship, the almost unfathomable respect that Trump has for Putin.” Talbott believes that Trump, by showing so little regard for the institutions established by the political West in the past seventy years, is putting the world in danger.

...

The Russians see friendly faces in the Administration. Tillerson, as the chairman of ExxonMobil, did “massive deals in Russia,” as Trump has put it. He formed an especially close relationship with Igor Sechin, who is among Putin’s closest advisers, and who has made a fortune as chief executive of the state oil consortium, Rosneft. Trump’s first national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, took a forty-thousand-dollar fee from the Russian propaganda station RT to appear at one of its dinners, where he sat next to Putin.

...

The Obama Administration, in its final days, had retaliated against Russian hacking by expelling thirty-five Russian officials and closing two diplomatic compounds. The Kremlin promised “reciprocal” punishment, and American intelligence took the first steps in sending new officials to Moscow to replace whoever would be expelled. “People were already on planes,” a U.S. intelligence official said. But on December 30th Putin said that he would not retaliate. To understand the abrupt reversal, American intelligence scrutinized communications involving Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S., and discovered that Flynn had had conversations with him, which touched on the future of economic sanctions. (Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met with Kislyak in Trump Tower during the transition; the aim, according to the White House, was to establish “a more open line of communication in the future.”) Flynn was forced to resign when news broke that he had lied to Vice-President Mike Pence about these exchanges.

...

The working theory among intelligence officials involved in the case is that the Russian approach—including hacking, propaganda, and contacts with Trump associates—was an improvisation rather than a long-standing plan. The official said, “After the election, there were a lot of Embassy communications”—to Moscow—“saying, stunned, ‘What we do now?’ ”

Alexey Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, and a figure with deep contacts inside the Russian political élite, said, “Trump was attractive to people in Russia’s political establishment as a disturber of the peace for their counterparts in the American political establishment.” Venediktov suggested that, for Putin and those closest to him, any support that the Russian state provided to Trump’s candidacy was a move in a long-standing rivalry with the West; in Putin’s eyes, it is Russia’s most pressing strategic concern, one that predates Trump and will outlast him. Putin’s Russia has to come up with ways to make up for its economic and geopolitical weakness; its traditional levers of influence are limited, and, were it not for a formidable nuclear arsenal, it’s unclear how important a world power it would be. “So, well then, we have to create turbulence inside America itself,” Venediktov said. “A country that is beset by turbulence closes up on itself—and Russia’s hands are freed.” ♦

______________________________________________

See also: Information war | Psychological war Hybrid war as the Russian Military-Intelligence-Political Strategy Russian General Staff | and Russian Military Intelligence | and Shoigu Korobov and Gerasimov | Shoigu, Gerasimov, Korobov

"The World Bank has estimated that Russia’s mineral resources are worth an estimated $75 trillion. For the most part, however, Russia lacks the technology and the capital to bring these reserves into production. The overall size of the Russian economy was $1.2 trillion in 2015. Adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), this is equivalent, in US dollars, to a $3.5 trillion economy. This puts the Russian economy at one-fifth the size of the U.S. economy and less than one-tenth the size of the combined American-EU economic turnover, even after adjusting for PPP. Simply put, over the long-term, and especially during periods of low oil prices, Moscow simply does not have the economic base to mount a serious military challenge to the United States and its allies... It is doing everything it can, from accumulating strategic chips in the Middle East to supporting, and even financing, some of the anti-EU rightwing parties in Europe calling for an end to Russian sanctions, to improve its bargaining position with the West. Ultimately, Moscow is banking that a new administration in Washington will give it a way out of the hole it has dug itself into. We have no reason to do this. Putin’s hand is growing weaker, not stronger. Time favors the West.That doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas where United States-Russian cooperation makes sense. Nuclear arms control is an obvious choice. Both countries are about to embark on a multi-billion dollar, “upgrade cycle.” An accord to reduce each side’s stock of nuclear weapons before the money is spent to upgrade them makes a lot of sense–especially for Moscow who doesn’t have the money to finance such an upgrade cycle. Soviet expansionism a generation ago turned out to be little more than a cover for an economy that was rotting from corruption, cronyism and mismanagement. The Soviet Union’s fate will ultimately prove to be the same outcome for Putin’s Russia."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With his administration on the defensive over investigations into alleged Russian meddling in last year's election, U.S. President Donald Trump is no longer tweeting praise for his Kremlin counterpart.

Less than five weeks after he took office, the chances of a spring thaw in relations between Washington and Moscow – once buoyed by an apparent "bromance" between Trump and President Vladimir Putin during the U.S. political campaign – are looking much dimmer, U.S. officials say.

His top foreign policy advisers have started talking tougher on Russia, and the apparent cooling of Trump's approach follows the resignation last month of his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a vocal advocate of warmer ties with Moscow. He was replaced by Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, who is more hawkish on Russia and allied with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general.

In one other sign of a stiffening attitude, two officials said the administration had offered the job of top Russia adviser at the National Security Council to Russia scholar Fiona Hill, a leading Putin critic. Her books include "Mr. Putin, Operative in the Kremlin", an allusion to the Russian leader's past as a KGB officer. It was not immediately known whether she had accepted the post.

Jared Kushner at the Trump International Golf Club.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Pressure also has come to bear from Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress, long wary of his campaign overtures to Putin, and from European allies anxious over any sign that the president might prematurely ease sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.

Posing fresh obstacles to rapprochement with Russia, analysts say, is mounting evidence that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the president's son-in-law JaredKushner, and other members of Trump's team communicated with Russian officials during and after the presidential campaign.

The mushrooming inquiry - which is now focused on Sessions and his contacts with Moscow's ambassador to Washington - has fueled calls for expanded investigations into allegations that Moscow sought to sway the election's outcome.

"There is so much panic in the U.S. political establishment over Russia right now that Trump will be boxed in on what he can do," said Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

White House officials say there were no improper contacts, and Russia denies any meddling.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives at the the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 19, 2016.Reuters/Mike Segar

While Trump has yet to lay down his Russia policy, most signs suggest no swift changes in the relationship, which sank to a post-Cold War low under his predecessor Barack Obama, mostly due to bitter differences over Syria and Ukraine.

Mattis sought to reassure NATO allies during a visit to Europe last month, telling them there would be no military cooperation between the United States and Russia in the near future.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley this week denounced Russia for casting a veto to protect the Syrian government from Security Council action over accusations of chemical weapons use, and also recently insisted the United States would not recognize Russia's seizure of Crimea.

Trump's openness to closer ties to Russia and his emphasis, particularly during the campaign, on fighting terrorism sparked concerns among current and former U.S. officials that he might trade away U.S. interests in other areas in exchange for military and intelligence cooperation against groups such as Islamic State.

Trump's language on Russia now has shifted somewhat from campaign days, when he tweeted his admiration for Putin as a strong leader, and the Russian president paid him compliments.

Trump told a news conference in mid-February that, "I would love to be able to get along with Russia," but added that, "It's possible I won't be able to get along with Putin."

Two senior European officials this week told reporters in Washington they discerned an evolution in the Trump administration's stance toward Russia, saying there appeared to be no desire to engage in such a "grand bargain" in which, for example, Ukraine-related sanctions might be eased in return for Russian action on other issues.

"What we consider reassuring is that, at least during our meetings, nobody came with this idea of a grand bargain, with the idea of a big deal," said one senior European official on condition of anonymity.

Said a second senior European official: "Vis-a-vis Russia, to be frank I have the impression that the analysis and the positions of this administration are probably now closer to our position than (they) may have been two or three months ago."

Recent Russian actions have created new complications, including a stepped-up offensive by pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and what the Pentagon described as the bombing this week by Russian and Syrian aircraft of U.S.-backed Syrian rebels – something Moscow denied had happened.

For its part, the Kremlin said on Wednesday it was patiently waiting for "some kind of actions" from the Trump administration so that it could understand what the future holds for relations.

Senior military officials from Russia and NATO have held their first direct talks since the Western alliance cut military contacts with Russia three years ago over the Kremlin's interference in Ukraine.

Russia's Defense Ministry said NATO Military Committee Chairman Petr Pavel spoke with Russia's military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, by telephone on March 3 about the prospects for restarting cooperation, how to prevent accidental altercations between military forces, and other pressing security issues.

NATO headquarters in Brussels confirmed that the telephone conversation took place.

A NATO spokesman said that "the two generals agreed that they would remain in contact."

The phone conversation followed a meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, on February 16 between Gerasimov and U.S. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Pentagon said Dunford's talks with Gerasimov focused on "the current state of U.S.-Russian military relations and the importance of consistent and clear military-to-military communication to prevent miscalculation and potential crises."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed Dunford's meeting with Gerasimov as an important "bilateral" attempt by a NATO ally to "develop lines of communications and develop the dialogue with Russia."

NATO has been ratcheting up its troop presence in Poland and its three Baltic member states in response to their concerns about Russian aggression since Moscow's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and its support for Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In a statement on March 3, Russia's Defense Ministry said Gerasimov expressed concern to the head of NATO's Military Committee about "the significant increased military activity of the alliance near the Russian border."

The ministry said both sides "confirmed the need for mutual steps to reduce tension and stabilize the situation in Europe."

Despite substantial evidence of Russian military support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, Moscow continues to deny charges by NATO, the government in Kyiv, the United States, and other Western governments that Russia has sent troops and weaponry to bolster separatist forces there.

The European Union, the United States, and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia over its role in the conflict, as well as for its seizure and annexation of Crimea.

While military contacts had been severed between Russia and NATO over the issue, diplomats and government officials from the two sides have continued to meet.

MARGARET WARNER: Attorney General Jeff Sessions returned to work today, after recusing himself from any investigation into Moscow’s election meddling. His recusal came after conceding he’d met twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign.

SERGEI LAVROV, Russian Foreign Minister (through interpreter): I can only refer to a quote that was circulated today in the mass media. This strongly resembles a witch-hunt or the times of McCarthyism, which we thought were long over in the United States as a civilized country.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Trump also called it a witch-hunt. And, today, he tweeted a photo of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2003. Mr. Trump said: “We should start an immediate investigation into Senator Schumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite.”

Schumer tweeted back that he’d happily talk about his contact with Putin, asking, “Would you and your team?”

Later, the president also demanded a probe of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for having said she never met with the Russian ambassador. Politico published a photo today showing he was part of a larger meeting with Pelosi in 2010.

The political storm has overshadowed any concrete steps toward improving ties with Russia, as Mr. Trump has advocated.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If we have a good relationship with Russia, believe me, that’s a good thing.

MARGARET WARNER: Relations turned icy at the end of Obama administration, over Russian aggression in Ukraine, and its military backing for Damascus in the Syrian civil war. Since Mr. Trump took office, diplomacy between the two sides, at least publicly, has been limited. The president spoke with Putin by phone after the inauguration.

And his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, met with Lavrov at a G20 summit in Germany. Meanwhile, uncertainty over Mr. Trump’s intentions toward Russia is rattling American allies in Europe. Vice President Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis tried last month to reassure NATO partners of Washington’s alliance solidarity.

One NATO partner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, now plans to visit Washington on March 14.

For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Margaret Warner.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A broader look now at the state of U.S.-Russia relations and what is at stake for these two countries.

We get two views.

Andrew Weiss worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations as a staffer on the National Security Council in the State and Defense Departments. He’s now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

And Paul Saunders, he focused on Russia at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. He’s now the executive director of the Center for the National Interest. It’s a foreign policy think tank.

And we welcome both of you back to the program.

Andrew Weiss, to you first.

What is the sense of the state of U.S.-Russia relations right now?

ANDREW WEISS, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: The relationship between the United States and Russia is broken.

We are at a low point that goes back to the darkest days of the Cold War. President Trump has been promising that there’s going to be some kind of dramatic resurgence. He’s talked about doing a grand bargain with Vladimir Putin, presumably focused on the war in Syria, the fight against ISIS. He hopes to contain China and deal with more a meddlesome Iran by somehow breaking ground with Russians.

I think that’s setting expectations way too high. The reasons for the relationship being in the doghouse are profound and really go to the heart of who we are as a nation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Paul Saunders, how do you see the state of relations right now?

PAUL SAUNDERS, Center for the National Interest: Well, I agree with Andrew that the relationship is really at its worst state today since probably the 1980s.

I think there is no question about that. Where I would differ with Andrew is, I think there are opportunities to improve the relationship. I do think there are some possibilities in Syria on some other issues, arms control perhaps, some other areas, too.

And, you know, the president seems determined to try that. If he does, I think Moscow would be receptive. I think it’s appropriate to keep our expectations in check. But I do believe there are some possibilities.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you say they’re broken, Andrew Weiss?

ANDREW WEISS: Well, it comes back to the sort of core question of, how does the U.S. formulate its national security policy?

Our view is that there is a liberal international order out there. It’s been sort of the guiding structure of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II to build alliances, institutions like NATO alliance, support for the E.U. and key alliances in East Asia.

The Russians, on the other hand, really want to see that international order chipped away at. They believe that that gives the U.S. too much authority in the world. And they have seen that at home the way to build the legitimacy of the Putin regime is on the back of this idea that there is an external threat, and to use the United States as a boogeyman that will mobilize the Russian people in support of the Kremlin.

JUDY WOODRUFF: If that’s the case, Paul Saunders, what gives you any belief that the Russians — you listed Syria, you list arms control as two areas that you felt the Russians would be receptive to some sort of overture from President Trump. What makes you believe that that’s the case?

PAUL SAUNDERS: Well, I think I would disagree, respectfully, with some of the things that Andrew said there.

First of all, I think Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy in Russia rests primarily actually on Russia’s economic success. Now, the Russian economy certainly has been stalled for the last several years. There have been some further slowdowns because of the sanctions, but most Russians are living far better than at any time in the history of that country.

Secondly, as we think about the international system, the real threat to the international system is an alignment between China and Russia. Russia, on its own, its economy is a 10th of ours. They’re not going to destabilize the international system.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So what about that, Andrew Weiss?

ANDREW WEISS: Well, I think what we have seen in the past couple of years is a lot of opportunism and risk-taking. That has now become the sort of bread and butter of Russian foreign policy.

So, you see spur-of-the-moment, improvised decisions to seize Crimea, to launch a covert war in Eastern Ukraine. You then see this dramatic military intervention in Syria. And then, most obviously, recently, we have seen this brazen interference in our domestic political life.

So this is a different, much more sort of nimble Russian foreign policy. It’s very destabilizing. It’s created a lot of apprehension, particularly among our European allies. And the idea that the Russians just want to kind of go back to normal, I think, is misplaced.

It is in their interest to see a destabilized U.S., to have our political system chaotic and sort of locked in an internal division. That to them is a success.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That is the picture many Americans are getting, Paul Saunders, isn’t it?

PAUL SAUNDERS: I think many Americans are getting that picture.

And, look, I mean, there are serious problems in Russia’s conduct, and there are serious reasons for Americans to be concerned. I think there are ways to deal with that. The president has talked about dealing with Russia from a position of strength. I think, if we take that approach, we can deal with many of these concerns.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What’s at risk here? What’s at stake, Andrew Weiss, if this relationship is in the condition that you describe? What stands to happen?

ANDREW WEISS: The worst thing, which I can see readily happening — we had an incident about two days ago in Syria — is some form of unintentional either accident or direct conflict between our military forces. So, just a couple …

JUDY WOODRUFF: Between Russian and U.S. forces?

ANDREW WEISS: Exactly.

The risk of that happening is uncomfortably high. The Russians in Syria are operating increasingly close to our forces. We had an incident a couple days where they were bombing Syrian opposition forces supported by the United States, and our special operators were just four or five kilometers away.

In the air over Syria, we have had a lot of near misses. You see brazen Russian efforts in the airspace over Europe to basically try to get as obnoxious and be in our face, and the idea is, we will put back, that we will be intimidated.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Paul Saunders, why isn’t that a worry?

PAUL SAUNDERS: I think it’s a very considerable worry.

I view that as a reason to try to engage with Moscow. I think there are a lot of other reasons to try to engage. If this relationship slips from adversarial to truly hostile, and we start to see Russia providing advanced weapons to China, providing more advanced weapons to Iran, there are a lot of other things that could happen that could be much worse for the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Speaking of which, in less than a minute, nuclear weapons? These are the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Andrew Weiss, what about that?

ANDREW WEISS: That part of the agenda between the United States and Russia is deadlocked.

So, we’re unlikely — regardless of what Donald Trump’s policies are on defense spending, on changes to our nuclear arsenal, the reality is, we have fundamental disagreements with the Russians. They have violated a key arms control treaty, the INF Treaty, which Russia has now fielded new cruise missiles that violate that treaty.

And they’re very concerned about U.S. programs, our missile defenses in Europe, and these new conventional strategic systems which they believe will threaten their strategic deterrent.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, Paul Saunders, how do you see the risks there?

PAUL SAUNDERS: Well, I think the risks are considerable.

At the same time, our economy is 10 times the size of the Russian economy. They can’t afford — they can afford even less than the Soviet Union to get into a nuclear arms race with the United States. I think we hold the cards.

I think it’s an opportunity, again, from a position of strength, to try to pursue that agenda address the concerns we have about Russian conduct and try to lock in some stability in the relationship.

Dunford and Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the first deputy defense minister, discussed the current state of the military relationship between the United States and Russia. This was the first face-to-face ...

The meeting between Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, will take place in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It will be the first face-to-face meeting...

Of course, the facts that Azerbaijan can organize the meeting at a high level and is preferable in terms of security and communication should be noted. Moreover, Azerbaijan has lately hosted major international sports and cultural events. Considering ...

In their meeting in Baku, Dunford and Gerasimov are likely to discuss operations in Syria, where Russia is backing the Assad government in the civil war and the U.S. military is waging a campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group. President ...

Baku-APA. United States President Donald Trump is “pleased” with the results of first talks between officials of the new administration in Washington and Russia, White House Spokesperson Sean Spicer said at a press briefing on Thursday, APA reports quoting the US media.

Spicer added that the discussions that took place recently were “productive.”

The spokesperson was referring to the meeting of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Germany as well as the meeting of Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and his Russian counterpart Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov in Azerbaijan.

Spicer also said he has no new updates on a potential meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two men agreed that they should meet in person when they spoke on the phone, but set no time frame for when the meeting should take place.

Note that on February 16, Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces - First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation General Valery Gerasimov, the army and chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces Committee, General Joseph Dunford met in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The Pentagon said Dunford's talks with Gerasimov focused on "the current state of U.S.-Russian military relations and the importance of consistent and clear military-to-military communication to prevent miscalculation and potential crises.".

"This is the first high-level military contact after the NATO Council made a decision on the freeze of relations with Russia," Russia's Defense Ministry said on Friday. It also said the chief of Russia's General Staff, First Deputy Defense Minister ...

... threat of overt military attack, but it's a raft of other measures, including covert, paramilitary, and non-military activities, some of which will be coordinated by the intelligence arms of Russia,” Bradshaw said in January at a Council on Foreign ...

Russia's meddling in US election could be 'act of war', says Nato commander. General Sir Adrian Bradsh﻿aw says 'blatant aggression' ... Nato's most senior British officer has claimed that alleged Russian cyber attacks could be deemed an act of war and ...

"This is the first high-level military contact since the NATO council took the decision to freeze relations with Russia," it said. "The two sides exchanged opinions about current security issues, the prospects of reestablishing military cooperation and ...

"The parties exchanged their opinions about topical issues of security, prospects for a recovery of military cooperation, prevention of incidents and participation of the Alliance representatives in international activities held by the Russian Defence ...

... telephone conversation since relations between Russia and the West soured. The initiative came from the military alliance, the Russian Defense ... the NATO council decision to freeze relations with Russia,” the ministry said ...

Russia calls for 'post-West' world order: LavrovYahoo NewsMunich (Germany) (AFP) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Saturday for an end to a world order dominated by the West and said Moscow wanted to establish a "pragmatic"relationship with the United States. Lavrov was speaking at the Munich ...and more »

West holds on to Cold War mentality: Russian FMPress TVThe Russian foreign minister expressed regret over NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's silence with regard to Moscow's call for cooperation between Russia and the Western militaryalliance. "We need to resume [our] military cooperation. [And yet ...and more »

If Vladimir Putin ever writes his autobiography, he will have to call it “The Art of the Bluff.” No Russian leader since Catherine the Great’s Prime Minister, Grigory Potemkin, has done a more masterful job of blending guile, audacity and bluff to project an undeserved illusion of power and success. Whether that strategy ultimately bears fruit will depend on the Kremlin’s ability to negotiate a wide-ranging agreement with the Trump administration that addresses Russia’s principal strategic concerns; in short, the White House’s willingness to engage in a geopolitical monopoly game in which the Kremlin can cash in chips that it has acquired, principally in the Middle East, in return for valuable concessions elsewhere.

What Moscow wants from Washington is first and foremost an end to economic sanctions, secondly an agreement on Ukraine that ensures that Kiev joins neither the European Union or NATO and that results in a reduction in the levels of financial and military aid to a point that, eventually, Ukraine will have no choice but to seek an accommodation with Russia. Moscow is unlikely to get either outcome.

First, it’s hard to imagine under what conditions Russia would willingly withdraw from the Crimea and cease its support for secessionists in the Donbas basin short of the complete collapse of Russian power; that’s possible, but highly unlikely in the short-term. That means the end of economic sanctions would also be a de facto acceptance of the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Such a concession would be very problematic. There would be strong bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate against such an acceptance.

Both Congress and the president have the authority to impose sanctions, the former by legislative action and the latter by executive order. Both branches of government imposed sanctions on Russia as a result of its invasion of Ukraine. Those sanctions imposed by executive order could presumably be cancelled by another executive order. Those sanctions imposed by legislation would, most likely, require new legislation to be repealed. Any attempt by the Trump administration to accept Russian actions in the Ukraine would bring a quick, bipartisan, rebuke from Congress and, more importantly, create a split within Republican ranks.

On February 8, a bipartisan group of senators led by Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) introduced the Russian Sanctions Review Act of 2017. The Act would require specific congressional approval of any easing of economic sanction against Russia by the United States. In the event the President proposed to “waive, suspend, reduce, provide relief from, or otherwise limit the application of sanctions”, the Senate and the House would have 120 days in which to decide whether to pass a Resolution of Disapproval. If Congress failed to do so, the sanctions would be lifted at the end of the 120-day period.

In recent weeks, the Trump White House has indicated that it intends to maintain the sanctions for now. VP Mike Pence, said that the Trump Administration was “very troubled” by the resumption of fighting in eastern Ukraine. The resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has also diminished the likelihood of a wide ranging agreement with Moscow. Flynn favored a closer relationship with Russia in order to have both countries cooperate to jointly meet the threat posed by radical jihadists. That price of that cooperation would have presumably required Washington to accept at least some of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Any move to “legitimize” Russian actions in Ukraine would also be highly destabilizing to NATO and especially to its newest members in Eastern Europe. Those members, many of which are already dealing with a constant stream of Russian provocations, would see such an agreement as a threat that their own security was little more than a bargaining chip that might be traded away in return for Russian concessions elsewhere. The European Union has insisted on the full implementation of the Minsk Accords and an end to fighting in Ukraine by Russian backed separatists. EU officials have indicated that the organization will extend the economic sanctions against Russia, when they expire on March 15, for another 6 months.

Finally, any kind of accommodation with Moscow over Ukraine will rekindle, not that they are going to go away anytime soon, the issue of Russian manipulation of the recent presidential election and the extent to which Donald Trump is in any way beholden to Vladimir Putin for his election. It’s clear that the Kremlin intervened in the 2016 presidential election and that there were numerous contacts between campaign officials and prominent supporters of the Trump candidacy. Whether their actions affected the outcome and whether these actions were somehow coordinated with the Trump campaign, both highly unlikely, will probably never be settled.

Moreover, exactly what chips is Russia bringing to this geopolitical monopoly game? Of late, the Kremlin has certainly created the impression that its power and influence in the Middle East has been rising. It intervened successfully in Syria to stabilize the government of its client Bashar al-Assad. It is trying to actively promote Libyan Field Marshall Khalifa Hiftar as the next “ruler” of Libya. It seems to have a good working relationship with Iran, and has been steadily expanding its influence throughout the rest of the Middle East. Notwithstanding the above, however, what exactly does Moscow have to offer Washington?

What the U.S. wants in the Middle East is the elimination of Islamic State (IS) and a strategy to contain and eliminate al Qaeda and other jihadist groups; it wants to contain the expansion of Iranian influence and power and prevent the emergence of Sunni-Shia proxy conflicts, like those in Syria and Yemen; political stability, especially in Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies; and ensure that neither Iran, nor anyone else, interferes with the free flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf to world markets. There is little that Moscow can do to advance any of these objectives.

While Washington is hardly a supporter of the Assad regime, neither does it have a credible alternative to the Assad government. The idea that there were “moderate” groups within the Syrian opposition was always a questionable assumption. Syria, without Assad, is more likely to resemble Libya than it is to be a paragon of secular, democratic stability. Indeed, more than one “realist” has suggested that however repugnant and barbaric the Assad regime may be, Moscow did the West a favor by ensuring that it stayed in power since the alternative would have been even worse.

Russian air power can certainly assist in the fight against Islamic State. What the U.S. needs to defeat Islamic State, however, isn’t more air power, it has plenty of that and can easily get more if its needed. The U.S. needs boots on the ground to root out IS militants and roll back the territory controlled by Islamic State. Russia, outside, at best, of a token Special Forces contingent, isn’t going to send ground troops to the Middle East. Moscow can certainly help on the intelligence side and, more importantly, push the Assad government to commit more resources to battling Islamic State. Damascus will do that once the rest of its Syrian opponents have been crushed, but until then has little reason to focus on IS.

Moscow has better relations with Tehran than does Washington, or any of its allies, but that relationship stops well short of any meaningful influence or leverage. Russia does not have the ability to reign in Tehran or curb the expansion of its power and influence, much less cut short the emergence of Sunni-Shia proxy conflicts. The two countries share a common interest in shoring up the Assad regime in Syria, in undermining American influence on the Middle East and in increasing the price of oil on world markets. Beyond that, the expansion of Iranian influence in the Middle East is not necessarily in Russia’s self-interest.

Moreover, during the “sanctions period,” Moscow played an important role in running interference for Tehran in organizations like the UN Security Council and in reducing its diplomatic isolation. That role is still important, but far less so now that many countries have dismantled the economic sanctions. Iran has played an equally important role in mobilizing its proxies to provide boots on the ground for the Russian intervention in Syria. It’s an open question whether Moscow needs Tehran more than Tehran needs Moscow.

There is a sense of déjà vu in comparing the appearance of rising Russian power and influence around the world today with a similar period in Soviet history. In the 1970s and 1980s Soviet power around the world seemed ascendant. The Soviet navy, for the first time in its history, was rapidly developing a blue water fleet capable of challenging U.S. naval power around the world. Their proxies were visible throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia, and they had a stable of client states across the Middle East and South Asia that ran from Algeria to India.

When Soviet troops intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, many saw it as a first step in a campaign that would see Soviet troops roll across Baluchistan, giving the USSR warm water ports on the Indian Ocean just kitty-corner from the Persian Gulf. Instead, even as Moscow appeared to be flexing its power, its economic foundations were crumbling. By 1991, the Soviet Union had been dissolved. The Soviet empire in Eastern Europe had collapsed and the legacy of five centuries of Russian/Soviet imperialism stretching from Ivan IV to Joseph Stalin simply evaporated.

The current appearance of Russian power notwithstanding, the Russian economy has deep and profound problems that will sharply limit the ability of Moscow to project its power and influence aboard. The Western media has already raised the prospect that “Russia would run out of money soon,” perhaps as soon as 2017. Such claims are not entirely correct, although Moscow’s hard currency reserves have fallen significantly since 2008. Russian reserves peaked in 2008, at $596 billion. As of the end of 2016, they have fallen to around $323 billion–consisting of $314 billion in foreign exchange reserves, $6.5 billion in Special Drawing Rights and $3 billion in reserves at the International Monetary Fund. In addition, Russia has gold reserves currently valued at $61 billion.

Russia also has a Reserve Fund, euphemistically referred to as “a rainy-day fund” by Western journalists, intended to cover shortfalls in the national budget as well as a Welfare Fund intended to finance future pension obligations and large-scale investment projects. The Welfare Fund currently has a balance of around $70 billion. Roughly 43 percent of the Central Banks reserves are denominated in Euros, 11 percent are in sterling and six percent are in a mix of currencies, including the Japanese yen and the Canadian and Australian dollars. The balance of 40 percent is denominated in U.S. dollars.

Most of Russia’s exports, 80 percent plus of which are commodities, are denominated in dollars. A strong dollar benefits those exporters as their income is in dollars and their expenses are in rubles. A strong dollar, however, reduces the value of Russia’s non-dollar denominated reserves when they are expressed in U.S. currency. The balances in the Reserve Fund have fallen from roughly $92 billion in September 2014, to around $30 billion at the end of 2016. It is expected to be depleted sometime in 2017. The Kremlin has indicated that it may tap the Welfare Fund to finance any future budget deficits.

The most significant declines in Russia’s reserves occurred during 2014 and 2015, when Russia’s Central Bank was attempting to defend the exchange rate of the ruble. The ruble was allowed to float in 2016, dropping to a low of 82 against the dollar in January. It ended 2016, at 61 rubles to the dollar. Since 2014, the Russian ruble has dropped about 40 percent against the dollar. The precipitous decline in reserves notwithstanding, Russia is not going to run out of hard currency reserves anytime soon. Russia’s government debt is relatively low and, notwithstanding the sanctions, it can find buyers for new debt should it need to do so.

In addition, much of the country’s mineral wealth, especially the critical petroleum sector, is directly controlled by the government. In December, for example, the Russian government received 10.5 billion euros ($11.3 billion) for selling a 19.5 percent stake in the giant state oil company Rosneft to the Qatar Investment Authority and the Swiss commodities production and trading conglomerate Glencore. While the sanctions restricted the potential buyers for the Rosneft stake and the price paid, it did not preclude the sale.

Russia’s larger economic problem is that its economy is highly dependent on the export of hydrocarbons. The actual economic impact of the oil and gas sector varies depending on the prevailing price of oil, but, on average, this sector provides 52 percent of the federal budget and 70 percent of the value of Russian exports. Simply put, the Russian economy rises and falls based on the prevailing price of petroleum. From 2000 through 2007, when oil prices were high, the Russian economy grew at an average of seven percent per year, the Russian stock market was among the best performers in the world and average incomes in Russia more than tripled.

Since 2008 average annual growth has been virtually zero. Capital flight has accelerated, foreign investment has fallen precipitously and inflation ha accelerated–topping out at over 13 percent. Adjusted for inflation, average incomes in Russia have declined by about 20% since 2010. Since the imposition of sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the economy contracted by around 3.9 percent in 2015, and by an additional .5 percent in 2016. During this period, there were wide spread reports of government workers going unpaid in some of the poorer regions and even sporadic, anti-government protests.

The economy is expected to show between .5 percent and one percent growth next year. Given the acute regionalization of the Russian economy, however, growth rates of under one percent mean that the Moscow region, which accounts for about one-quarter of Russian economic output, and those regions that are major hydrocarbon producers, will see some economic growth, while the rest of Russia will remain mired in recession. Even with the return to growth in 2017, Moscow has still been forced to cut all government expenditures by 10 percent and to further reduce military expenditures by an additional five percent.

Moscow needs oil prices to average around $70 per barrel in order to balance its budget, and ideally prices between $70 and $100 per barrel for it to fund the modernization of its military and to rebuild its foreign exchange reserves. Oil prices will not recover to these levels anytime soon. In fact, rising production in Libya and Iran, both of which were exempted from the recently-announced OPEC brokered agreement for a 1.2 million BOPD production cutback, expansion of Canadian oil exports to the U.S. via the Keystone Pipeline, and the expected increase in U.S. production as a result of an easing of federal regulations and an opening up of Federal lands to oil production from fracked wells, will largely offset the production cutbacks. In the short-term, oil prices are unlikely to improve much. That isn’t good news for the Kremlin.

The World Bank has estimated that Russia’s mineral resources are worth an estimated $75 trillion. For the most part, however, Russia lacks the technology and the capital to bring these reserves into production. The overall size of the Russian economy was $1.2 trillion in 2015. Adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), this is equivalent, in US dollars, to a $3.5 trillion economy. This puts the Russian economy at one-fifth the size of the U.S. economy and less than one-tenth the size of the combined American-EU economic turnover, even after adjusting for PPP. Simply put, over the long-term, and especially during periods of low oil prices, Moscow simply does not have the economic base to mount a serious military challenge to the United States and its allies.

Students of Russian history have often pointed out that Russia’s geopolitical reality, an absence of a defensible frontier, has meant that for Moscow security could only be obtained by controlling ever larger swatches of its periphery. This “geopolitical imperative” has created a recurring dynamic in Russian history. During periods of strength, Russia’s power and territorial control expands outward only to contract and shrink back during periods of weakness. This dynamic has been particularly true in Eastern Europe, across which Russian hegemony has waxed and waned for the last 500 years. From that perspective, Moscow’s ascendancy in recent years is simply the predictable swing in the pendulum of Russian power. A comeback that many analysts had predicted as being inevitable.

This is where Vladimir Putin’s bluff has been so brazen. Russia’s aggressive posture in recent years, primarily since 2008, is not the result of growing Russian strength but a gambit to hide growing Russian weakness. It’s as if, starting in 2008, the Kremlin decided that reasserting Russia’s status as a great power was more important than maximizing economic growth, investment and development. Indeed, as the economic well being of the average Russian family has declined, the Kremlin’s answer has been to emphasize its success in restoring Russia’s international status regardless of the fact that in doing so it has further aggravated the economic downturn precipitated by low oil prices.

The Kremlin’s policy in the Ukraine, rather than being an example of the reassertion of Russian power in the world, and especially in the Russian periphery, is instead a glaring example of overreach. In Ukraine, Vladimir Putin bit off more than he could chew. Russia never had the ability to invade, much less subdue, Ukraine. The Kremlin gambled that the West would stand aside and give Russia a free hand. The gamble failed and in doing so its consequences, economic sanctions, aggravated what was already a steep economic contraction. The result is a “frozen conflict.” Russia is unwilling, and politically it is incapable, of withdrawing but lacks the means, either politically or militarily, to force Kiev to accede to its will.

It is doing everything it can, from accumulating strategic chips in the Middle East to supporting, and even financing, some of the anti-EU rightwing parties in Europe calling for an end to Russian sanctions, to improve its bargaining position with the West. Ultimately, Moscow is banking that a new administration in Washington will give it a way out of the hole it has dug itself into. We have no reason to do this. Putin’s hand is growing weaker, not stronger. Time favors the West.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas where United States-Russian cooperation makes sense. Nuclear arms control is an obvious choice. Both countries are about to embark on a multi-billion dollar, “upgrade cycle.” An accord to reduce each side’s stock of nuclear weapons before the money is spent to upgrade them makes a lot of sense–especially for Moscow who doesn’t have the money to finance such an upgrade cycle. Soviet expansionism a generation ago turned out to be little more than a cover for an economy that was rotting from corruption, cronyism and mismanagement. The Soviet Union’s fate will ultimately prove to be the same outcome for Putin’s Russia.

An earlier version of this column appeared in <a href="http://military.com" rel="nofollow">military.com</a>.